48 Hour Video Dash hosts viewing

48 Hour Video Dash hosts viewing

Kalli O'Brien, News Reporter

The third annual 48-Hour Video Dash screening and award ceremony took place Nov. 8.

Talan Memmott, creative digital media professor at Winona State University, organized this event to bring the film studies and mass communications students together with a little healthy competition. The challenge was also available for students of other majors.

“I wanted to challenge student video-makers outside of class with a practical and unpredictable set of constraints,” Memmott said.

The challenge for the production teams, which are usually made up of one to five students, was to receive a random array of characteristics.

These characteristics included a genre, a character type, a specific prop and one line of dialogue from a classic movie.

“The event works to build a community and culture within the digital media program without being coursework,” Memmott said.

One of the other judges of the competition, Andrea Wood, a film studies professor at Winona State, talked about what she looks for when first assessing the short films.

“When reviewing submissions, I look for originality, creativity and technical skill, as well as overall ability to create an engaging five-minute film around the stipulated requirements each team was assigned,” Wood said. “Their imagination, creativity and hard work are always a pleasure to see on the big screen.”

The event featured six student-made films. After the viewings, awards were handed out for Best Videography, Best Editing, Best Performance, Best Director, Best Picture and Audience Choice.

The Best Editing award went to Francisco Angel, for the film “Girls Night,” which depicted a lonely girl who was visited by a time traveler from the future. The audience later learns that the time traveler was her great, great-granddaughter.

The Best Performance award went to Michelle Bergh, for her role in the film “The Actress.” She played the role of an actress that doesn’t seem to be as good at acting as she thought she was.

The film “Rubber” collected the rest of the awards.

Harrison McCormick received the award for both Best Videography and Best Director. This fan favorite also received the Best Picture and Audience Choice awards.

“Rubber,” was a film about a young man struggling financially who then purchases a winning lottery ticket. Most of the young man’s money was stolen right out of his pocket, but not before he had the chance to slip a few hundreds into his sock.

Other films shown at the screening included “Eva,” which was about a robot cleaner, Eva, that stole the main characters fidget spinner, which ended up being the reason for Eva’s demise.

Another film was “The Blair Wizard Project” which was about two young girls going missing in the woods, and two guys going on a quest to find out what happened to them.

The last film was “Dance of Love,” a film about two young women dancing away their worries and having a good time together.